CHAPTER XVI.
M. GINORY, M. Leriche, the chief; Bernardet, and, in fact, all thejudiciary, believed that Charles Prades was guilty of the murder ofRovere. Bernardet, who had been an actor in this drama, had now become aspectator.
Paul Rodier, a good reporter, had learned before his confreres of thearrest of the young man, and, abandoning what he had called his trail ofthe Woman in Black, he abruptly whirled about and quickly invented asensational biography of the newcomer. Charles-Henri Prades, or ratherCarlos Prades, as he called himself, had been a _gaucho_, a buffalotamer, a cowboy, using, turn by turn, the American revolver against theRedskins and the Mexican lasso against the Yankees.
The journalist had obtained a signature, picked up by the lodging-housekeeper where the guilty man had been hunted down, and published in hispaper the autographic characters; he had deduced from them some dramaticobservations. Cooper, of former times; Gustave Aymard, of yesterday;Rudyard Kipling or Bret Harte, of to-day, had never met a personage moredreadful, and at the same time more heroic. Carlos Prades used thenavaja (Spanish knife) with the terrible rapidity of a Catalan. He hadfelt since the days of Buenos Ayres a fierce hate for the ex-Consul, andthis crime, which some of his brother reporters, habituallyindifferently informed (it was Paul Rodier who spoke), now attributedalone to the avarice of this Cambrioleur from over the sea; he, Rodier,gave this note as the cause of vengeance, and built thereupon a romancewhich made his readers shiver. Or, rather, he said nothing outright. Hepermitted one a glimpse into, he outlined, one knows not what, darkhistory. Soon he made this Carlos Prades the instrument and the arm ofan association of vengeance. He could even believe that there wasanarchy in the affair. Then he had the young man mixed in some loveaffair, a drama of passion, with Argentine Republic for the theatre.
As a result he had succeeded in making interesting the man whomBernardet had pushed a few nights before into the station house.
And, what was a singular thing, the reporter had divined part of thetruth. It was still another episode in his past that Rovere expiatedwhen he found himself one day, in his salon in the Boulevard de Clichy,face to face with the man who was to be his murderer. At Buenos Ayres,the ex-Consul had been associated in a large agricultural enterprisewith a man whose hazardous speculations, play and various adventures hadcompletely ruined him, and who had left two children--a young girl whomRovere thought for a moment of marrying, and a son, younger--poor beingsof whom the Consul, paying his partner's debts, seemed the naturalprotector. Jean Prades, in committing suicide--he had killed himself,frightened at the magnitude of his debts--had commended his children toRovere's care.
If Carlotta had lived, without doubt Rovere would have made her hiswife. He loved her with a deep and respectful tenderness. The poor girldied very suddenly, and there remained to Rovere only his dream. One ofthose remembrances of a fireside, one of those spectres which brush theforehead with their wings or the folds of their winding sheets, when inthe solitude in which he has voluntarily buried himself the searcherafter adventures recalls the past. The past of yesterday. Illusions,disillusions, old loves, miseries!
Rovere gave to this brother of the dead girl the affection which he hadfelt for her. He remembered, also, the father's request. Prades's son,passionate, eager to live, tempted in all his appetites, accepted as hisdue Rovere's truly paternal devotion, worked on the sympathy of thisman, who, through pity and duty, too, gave to Charles a little of theaffection which he had felt for the sister, almost his fiancee, and forthe father, dead by his own hand.
But, little by little, the solicitations, the unreasonable demands ofPrades, who, believing that he had a just claim on his father's oldpartner, found it very natural that Rovere should devote himself tohim--these continual and pressing demands became for the Consulirritating obsessions. Rovere seemed to this young man, who was aspendthrift and a gambler--a gambler possessed with atavistic frenzy--asort of living savings bank, from which he could draw without counting.His importunities at last seemed fatiguing and excessive, and Prades wasadvised one beautiful day that he no longer need count from that momenton the generosity of his benefactor. All this happened at Buenos Ayres,and about the time of the Consul's departure for France. Rovere added tothis very curt declaration a last benefit. He gave to the brother of thedead girl, to the son of Prades, of the firm of Rovere and Prades, a sumsufficient to enable him to live while waiting for better things, and hetold the young man in proper terms that, as he had now no one to dependupon, that he had better take himself elsewhere to be hung. The wordcould not be, with the appetites and habits of Charles Prades, taken ina figurative sense, and the young man continued his life of adventures,as tragic in their reality and as improbable as the reporters'melodramatic inventions.
Then, at the end of his resources, after having searched for fortuneamong miners, weary of tramping about in America, he embarked onemorning for Havre, with the idea that the best gold mine was still thatliving placer which he had exploited in Buenos Ayres, and which wascalled Pierre Rovere.
At Paris, where he knew the Consul had retired, Prades soon found traceof him, and learned where was the retreat of his brother-in-law. Hisbrother-in-law! He pronounced the word with a wicked sneer, as if it hadfor him a something understood about the sweet and maiden remembrance ofthe dead girl. There, in gay Paris, with some resources which allowedhim to pay for his board and lodging in a third-rate hotel, he searched,asked, discovered, at last, the address of the ex-Consul, and presentedhimself to Rovere, who felt, at sight of this spectre, his anger return.
The first time that Charles Prades had asked at the lodge if M. Roverewas at home, the Moniches had permitted him to go upstairs, and perhapsMme. Moniche would have suspected the man in the sombrero if she had notsurprised Jacques Dantin before the open safe and the papers.
Prades, moreover, had appeared only three times at Rovere's house, andon the day of the murder he had entered at the moment when Mme. Monichewas sweeping the upper floors, and Moniche was working in his shop inthe rear of the lodge, and the staircase was empty. He rang, andRovere, with dragging steps, came to open the door. Rovere was ill andwas a little ennuied, and he believed, or instinctively hoped, that itwas the woman in black--his daughter!
Everything served Prades's projects. He had come not to kill, but bysome means to gain entrance to Rovere's apartments, and, when oncethere, to find some resource--a loan, more or less freely given, more orless forced--and he would leave with it.
Rovere, already worn out, weary of his former supplications, felttempted to shut the door in his face, but Prades pushed it back,entered, closed it, and said:
"A last interview! You will never see me again! But listen to me!"
Then, Rovere allowed him to enter the salon, and despite the terribleweakness which he experienced wished to make this a final, decisiveinterview; to disembarrass himself once for all of this everlastingbeggar, sometimes whining, sometimes threatening.
"Will you not let me die in peace?" he said. "Have I not paid my debt?"
But Prades had seated himself in a fauteuil, crossed his legs and hungover his knee his sombrero, on which he drummed a minstrel march.
"My dear Monsieur Rovere, it is a last appeal for funds. I believe thatAmerica is better than Paris. And in order to return there or to dowhat I ought here, I must have what I have not--money!"
"I am tired of giving you money!" Rovere quickly replied.
And between these two men, bound by the remembrance of the dead girl--abond burdensome to the one, imposed upon by the other--a storm of bitterwords and harsh sentiments arose and kindled fierce anger in both.
"I tried to let you remain in peace, my dear Consul. But hunger hasdriven the wolf out of the woods. I am very hungry. And here I am!"
"I have nothing with which to feed your appetites. You are nothing but aburden to me."
"Oh! Ingratitude!" and Prades, with his Argentine accent, spoke hissister's name.
"My father died and
Carlotta herself entrusted me to your care, my dearbrother-in-law!"
It seemed to the sick man, irritated as he was, that this name--which hehad buried deep in his heart with chaste tenderness--was a supremeinsult.
"I forbid you to evoke that memory! You do not see, then, that thememory of that dear and saintly creature is one of the griefs of mylife!"
"And it is one of my heritages! Brother-in-law of a consul, _Senor mia_,but it is a title, and I hold it!"
Rovere experienced a strong desire to call, to ring, to give an order tohave this troublesome visitor put out. But energetic and fearless as hehad been but a short time before, now weakened by illness, he trembledbefore a possible scandal. Then he, unaided, attempted to push the youngman out of the salon. Prades resisted, and, at the first touch, gave abound, and all that was evil in him suddenly awoke.
A struggle ensued, without a word being pronounced by either; a quick,brutal struggle. Rovere counted on his past strength, taking by thecollar this Prades who threatened him, and Prades, while clutching theex-Consul with his left hand, searched in his pocket for a weapon--theone which Bernardet had taken from him.
This was a sinister moment! Prades pushed Rovere back; he staggered andfell against a piece of furniture, while the young man disengaginghimself, stepped back, quickly opened his Spanish knife, then, with abound, caught Rovere, shook him, and holding the knife uplifted, said:
"Thou hast willed it!"
It was at this instant that Rovere, whose hands were contracted, dug hisnails into the assassin's neck--the nails which the Commissary Desbriereand M. Jacquelin Audrays had found still red with blood.
Prades, who had come there either to supplicate or threaten, now hadonly one thought, hideous and ferocious--to kill! He did not reason. Itwas no more than an unchained instinct. The noise of the organs upon theBoulevard, which accompanied with their musical, dragging notes thissavage scene, like a tremulo undertone to a melodrama at the theatre, hedid not hear. The whole intensity of his life seemed to be concentratedin his fury, in his hand armed with the knife. He threw himself onRovere; he struck the flesh, opening the throat, as across the wateramong the Gauchos he had been accustomed to kill sheep or cut the throatof an ox.
Rovere staggered, wavered, freed from the hand which held him, andPrades stepping back, looked at him.
Livid, the dying man seemed to live only in his eyes. He had cast uponthe murderer a last meaning look--now, in a sort of supreme agony, helooked around, his eyes searched for a support, for aid, yes, theycalled, while from that throat horrible sounds issued.
Prades saw with a kind of fright, Rovere, with a superhuman tragiceffort, step back, staggering like a drunken man, pull with his poorcontracted hands from above the chimney piece an object which themurderer had not noticed and upon which, with an ardent, prayerfulexpression he fixed his eyes, stammering some quick inarticulate wordswhich Prades could not hear or understand.
It seemed to Prades that between his victim and himself there was awitness, and whether he thought of the value of the stones imbedded inthe frame or whether he wished to take from Rovere this last support inhis distress, he went to him and attempted to tear the portrait from hishands. But an extraordinary strength seemed to come to the dying man andRovere resisted, fastening his eyes upon the portrait, casting upon it aliving flame, like the last flare of a dying lamp, and with this last,despairing, agonizing look the ex-Consul breathed his last. He fell.Prades tore the portrait from the fingers which clutched it. That frame,he could sell it. He picked up here and there some pieces which seemedto him of value, as if on a pillaging tour on the prairies. He was aboutto enter the library where the safe was, when the noise of the openingof the entrance door awakened his trapper's instinct. Some one wascoming. Who it could be was of little importance. To remain was toexpose himself, to be at once arrested. The corpse once seen, the personwould cry aloud, rush out, close the door and send for the police.
Hesitating between a desire to pillage and the necessity for fright,Prades did not wait long to decide. Should he hide? Impossible! Then,stepping back to the salon door, he flattened himself as much aspossible against the wall and waited until the door should be openedwhen he would be completely hidden behind it. As Mme. Moniche steppedinto the room and cried out as she saw Rovere lying on the floor, Pradesslipped into the ante-chamber, found himself on the landing, closed thedoor, rapidly descended the stairs and stepped out upon the Boulevard deClichy among the passers-by, even before Mme. Moniche, terrified, hadcalled for help.
The Crime of the Boulevard Page 14
